- I'm Stephen Chung, And I'm an architect and a teacher.

On each episode of Cool Spaces, I'll deconstruct the world of architecture.

I'll show you some great buildings-- how they were designed and just what makes them so cool.

How do museums reflect the arts and culture of their city?

We'll take you to Philadelphia and the new home of a private art collection.

Learn how an African-American community came back to life in Charlotte, and see how an architect broke all the rules in Kansas City.

Art spaces on this episode of Cool Spaces.

- People visit an art space in search of something visual that captures their imagination.

Their minds and senses are tuned to see something beyond the ordinary.

For an architect, this is ideal because he or she can push the boundaries of design, but the architect has to find the right balance between the artwork and the desire to create an icon.

The art collection of Dr. Albert Barnes was one of the most impressive collections of Postimpressionist and early modern paintings in the world.

Beginning in 1922, its home was in suburban Philadelphia.

In fact, it was in a building right next to Dr. Barnes' own house.

Over time, the building that housed the collection needed costly repairs.

It was decided that it was time to build a new home, but there was one big catch: according to the will of Dr. Barnes, every wall and every gallery of the new building had to look exactly like the old one.

[bright music] ♪ ♪ What kind of caliber artist do you have in this space?

- Well, they're just astonishing as in every space.

Over here, we've got Rousseau.

We've got Courbet.

We've got Tintoretto, Soutine.

We've got a Renoir, Cezanne, de Chirico, Renoir, Cezanne, de Chirico, and over there, we have Van Gogh.

- It seems like you have a good collection here.

- We do have quite a good collection.

We have the greatest Renoir collection in the world.

We have the greatest Cezanne collection in the world.

There's more Cezannes in this building than there are in the Musee d'Orsay and l'Orangerie put together in Paris.

It is one of the greatest private collections ever put together, period, anywhere in the world.

- This is Philadelphia's city center.

A few blocks from City Hall, our exemplary early 20th-century Beaux-Arts buildings.

And like these buildings, the story of the Barnes Foundation stretches back more than a century.

Who was Dr. Barnes?

- Oh, my God, what a question.

[laughing] So Albert Barnes was a really, really interesting man.

He was a poor kid who became a very, very successful chemist who became one of the wealthiest men in Philadelphia and one of the greatest art collectors who ever lived.

- He really wanted his collection to be for the education of the common people, and so he used to throw people out who he felt were too sophisticated and was very, very particular about keeping out all art experts.

- He wanted to make sure that the socially elite would not come to his-- his space because they had criticized his taste in arts.

He was difficult in every possible way.

He had his dog write letters to people he didn't like-- or so it's said-- and we have letters signed by Fidel, his dog.

- This is the first home of the Barnes Foundation.

Built next door to the doctor's own residence in Merion, a suburb of Philadelphia, the only way to see the art was by appointment.

- The Barnes is a very special place.

It was a very special place in Merion.

It was, you know, one man's vision and, in some respects, his home, and it was a very intimate place.

- The original Barnes Foundation was an independent educational institution.

A small number of students were able to visit, but it became clear that the institution would need to reach a wider audience to remain viable.

They kept the building in Merion but relocated the art to a new building in downtown Philadelphia.

Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects designed the new museum.

The husband and wife team have been designing thoughtful buildings for almost 40 years.

Their often called the architect's architect because of their keen attention to material and detail.

They believe that architecture is an act of profound optimism and aspire in their works to provide a sense of grace.

The museum has everything that one would expect... an indoor courtyard that stands outside the galleries, an outdoor terrace for events, an indoor-outdoor garden cafe, a gift shop, sunken garden court and library... classrooms, and a new wing for exhibitions... and of course, there's the Barnes collection.

The design of the new building was a unique challenge, because it's really two very different spaces.

There's the new museum, and inside this shell is the Barnes collection.

According to Dr. Barnes' trust, everything in the Merion galleries had to remain in the exact same place in the new building.

What was the unique challenge of this building?

- Well, working for the Barnes Foundation, the challenge was that the paintings had to stay the same, the way they're hung had to stay the same, and the sequence of rooms had to stay the same.

So you have something that's very fixed.

How do you make something new?

- Dr. Barnes had very specific ideas about how the art related to the other objects and furniture he collected.

Each piece was meant to underscore this relationship.

- He put this Modigliani here because it seemed that the wash of light in his gallery, when he first installed it, was falling on the model just as it does here, so restoring that relationship is terribly important.

- I'd love to see your concept sketch for the building.

- Original Barnes-- this being the Barnes building-- was a gallery in a garden.

They said, "When it moves to downtown Philadelphia, "it would be really important to continue that sense of serenity," and so here we have the garden in the gallery.

- The two-story garden in the gallery stands in the middle of the library and galleries.

- If you look out the window, you can look down, and you can see the trees down below and the sky above.

And this was really seen as a kind of pause, of quietness and reflection.

- Tod Williams and Billie Tsien respected Dr. Barnes' legal trust, but they enhanced the original galleries with natural light, new burlap wall coverings, parquet floors, and crown moldings that all reinterpret the details of the original building.

- This gallery is really one of the sort of crown jewels that's got both the most amazing paintings in it, but it has this very high ceiling.

And at the top, Dr. Barnes commissioned Matisse to do these wall murals.

- We also have these incredible windows, full-height windows, that lead us into looking to the garden and to recognizing that you always have a relationship between the collection and the garden.

- Did he have this balcony also in his house?

- He did.

- The Barnes collection moved from the leafy suburbs to a dense urban setting, and the architects wanted to re-create a similar tranquil environment.

What strikes me about the Barnes is how you enter the building and the reasoning behind it.

The Barnes is located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, which happens to have a lot of world-famous museums, and in those buildings, the entrance is always highly visible.

You see it right away.

But in the Barnes, the entrance is hidden away.

The idea was to create an unfolding sequence and build a sense of anticipation.

If we go to the site plan, we see the parkway here.

Here's the sidewalk, and really, the sequence is something like this, moving past this long pool, kind of a meander up past this alley of trees.

There's a sculpture here which kind of draws you in, and as you turn the corner, only there do you finally see the entrance, and you feel like you're in this process of discovering it.

Turn the corner again, come this way, see a reflecting pool, a little bridge, and there's the entrance.

The architect creates a real sense of anticipation, for example, here in the entry.

Now, this boardwalk leads you through this giant portal into this outdoor lobby, if you will, and from the lobby, you'd think that the entrance would go right up to the glass, but instead, you're blocked by this pool of water.

Now, you can see through the glass.

You get a sense of what that space is like, but you don't go that way.

Instead you come around the side.

Now you're ready to see the space.

There's the water, went all the way around into this ante-lobby, through this giant portal, and into the main lobby.

- This great, long 140-foot fountain is the beginning of the journey from the parkway up to the Foundation, and as the first moment, you really begin to, with the sound of the water, still yourself, become calm, realize you're entering a garden.

- This is a kind of sloping path bordered on either side by these sort of amazing deodar pines, which were chosen by Laurie Olin, the landscape architect.

- The stone facade has different color panels taken from a quarry in Israel.

They achieve this look by having each stonecutter create their own signature pattern.

The unique panels were then installed randomly.

And it's not perfect.

There's not a ruler where each one is the same size or the same angle, right?

- Right, but there's a perfection in the beauty of every person's hand.

You know, every person actually is an artist.

We just don't recognize it.

And certainly the person who's cutting stone is an artist.

Dr. Barnes recognized that.

- Tod Williams and Billie Tsien bring together artisans and artists from across the world to create these one-off varied finishes.

- So there's a little bronze, steel, stone, and then here's this amazing fabric by Claudy Jongstra, who's a Dutch artist, who-- - Fabric means soft.

- You can touch it.

Nobody else can touch it.

Smack.

It's actually covered with 3M, but it's--it is this-- This is a silk and wool felt.

- But from a distance, it looks like stone, and then of course, you're touching it, and it's very soft.

This inside space is a grand light court between the galleries and the entrance.

It's a place for concerts and events or quiet contemplation.

- So this interior court-- we think of it as kind of a magical vestibule, a light court, a garden in itself.

Even though there are really no plants in it, there are trees outside.

It's interesting because natural light then is brought into the galleries in an indirect way.

- We're standing on recycled Coney Island boardwalk.

- This--this is-- - This is recycled Coney Island boardwalk and-- which means it's--you know, it's good for events because Coney Island boardwalks had pretty well everything.

- You mean Coney Island.

You mean the amusement park.

- I mean the amusement park.

Yeah.

Anything the human race could drop on the floor this floor has had dropped on it.

- It's fantastic.

It's-- It's actually a wood called ipe, or a variant of ipe, which is a very, very dense wood, and it's difficult to produce, and it's terrible to, in a way, have to destroy it, but fortunately today, we're recycling so many of our materials.

- The Barnes Foundation is a lead platinum building.

That's the highest level of sustainability, and nowhere is this more evident than the light box that tops off the museum.

- Great, thanks.

Welcome to the light box.

- Thank you.

- So this is really an amazing space here.

This is the kind of secret of the light box, the light court.

- This is sand-blasted glass.

- Sand-blasted glass.

Just a typical window wall.

Actually just a single pane of sand-blasted glass.

- The combination of the fluorescent strips here and the white membrane here together will create enough light, I guess, to help the outside look like it's glowing.

- And in the nighttime then, these fluorescent strips do make this box glow.

- And the sun comes through this pane.

It's etched glass.

And then it passes through a large section of glass here that's absolutely clear.

It's double-paned.

So we actually have now three panes of protective glass.

It's a very, very effective way to reduce the heat.

You actually can hear, and I can actually see down into the space up at the edge.

I can hear the voices of the people below.

So this is really the secret way by which we're adding a little artificial light to the space, but we're also bringing in a huge amount of natural light and allowing it to bounce indirectly off this surface and down into the space below.

- I always imagined being above Grand Central Station and looking down at the people down below.

- You guys are speaking a little loud.

[laughter] - So you have the light, the south light, that's coming through the triple glazing, the sand-blasted glass.

Then it comes through this glass here.

You get a wash or a glow.

You supplement that with fluorescent light, and then you kind of angle it down into the space.

So much work to create the right amount of glow, right?

The right glow?

- Yeah, that's right.

- Magic is not easy.

- But, remember, the third benefit-- not only do we have the glow to the outside.

We have the light to the inside.

But the entire roof of this thing is continuous PV panels.

- This natural light infuses the light court.

It also makes its way into the administrative offices.

- So the light court brings light in both to the gallery space but also to the work space.

- One of the work spaces is the conservation lab, something Dr. Barnes could've never have imagined.

- I love what I do.

The painting is by Claude Lorrain, titled Pastoral Landscape.

It was painted about 1645.

- Chief Conservator Barbara Buckley removes the discolored varnish that has darkened the canvas.

It's only the first stage of painstaking work that will take months.

Technology has changed the Barnes Foundation.

In fact, the way that visitors see the paintings has been changed by a new technology built right into the windows.

- These windows are really interesting because we couldn't have done this 10, 15 years ago.

It's new technology.

And the glazing only lets in 14% of the daylight.

In the old Barnes in Merion, all the windows, with the exception of the lowest sections of this main gallery, were pate glass.

People saw the paintings only with the yellow light of the galleries, not with the blue light of daylight, and for paintings-- painters like Cezanne who used so many blues or for the late Renoir, it was impossible to see the pictures properly, so effectively by using this new technology glass, we have a new collection, because we're actually seeing the colors in the true color temperature, as opposed to very much in the yellow spectrum.

Completely and utterly different.

It's transformational.

I mean, it's a radical thing.

- Well, one of the things that people also say is, "We love how everything is the same, how you've really reproduced the old gallery spaces," and we always have a kind of secret smile, because to them, everything is the same, but actually, if you look at what we've done, everything is different.

- What began as a difficult process of moving a permanent collection from a private to a public space has brought a new audience and appreciation to the Barnes Foundation.

- To be honest, there were many people who were so fretful about the process that they didn't have these huge expectations.

We had huge expectations, and I think in many ways we exceeded our own expectations, which was great.

- Throughout the process, I always asked myself, "What would Dr. Barnes do?"

Who knows?

He was a very eccentric man.

Look, Merion was a fabulous place, and it was very special.

I think this is equally special, and it will serve many generations to come.

And it's exposing the art to so many more people, and it's so much more accessible, and that's what the real mission was, and that was really a mission of Dr. Barnes.

- In the last century, Charlotte, North Carolina, was home to a large active, but segregated, African-American community.

When segregation ended, the community moved away, but not its history and their culture and art.

The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts and Culture was built to preserve this heritage, but the trustees and museum director had even bigger plans.

They wanted to build a national museum for arts and culture.

- People come here because this is a place they can relax, you know, and when you're happy and you're with people you want to be with, it's one of the times you're having the most fun.

The art, the people-- not only is it enjoying-- learn something, and at my age, I could use to learn something on a Friday.

- Good evening, and thanks for joining us tonight.

Tonight we began a year-long exploration of African-American identity.

- I absolutely love the galleries, because we're able to display all of this beautiful art that we weren't able to display before.

It's a very functional building, and I love every part of it, actually.

- The Gantt Center was designed by the Freelon Group of Raleigh, North Carolina.

So I see a lot of models here.

Tell me a little bit about your design process.

Phil Freelon is the founder and president of the Freelon Group.

- We normally start with an idea, particularly on a museum or a library.

We think that the building should begin to express some of the mission and vision of the institution.

- The Freelon Group has created a wide range of spaces at universities, hospitals, corporate offices, and public spaces, like libraries.

Their highest profile project is the newest museum on the Mall in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African-American History and Culture.

Tell me about the historic context here.

- Well, in Charlotte-- and this is the case in many cities, particularly in the South from the turn of the 19th century up through midcentury-- '70s let's say-- there were stand-alone African-American communities, and we wanted to find a way in this project to commemorate what was there.

Maybe the building could speak to some of that history itself.

- No one knows these buildings like Tom Hanchett, the historian at the Levine Museum of the South.

- Charlotte's a city that's over 250 years old, but they keep building new pieces of it, because this has been a trading city and a textile city and a railroad city.

So this is Grace AME Zion Church.

It was built about 1910 and renovated for the original Afro-American cultural center.

- This is the old Brooklyn neighborhood we're looking at right now.

- Yeah, we're right on the edge of what was the largest African-American neighborhood in Charlotte-- black Main Street, doctors, lawyers, and this church is about all that's left in this area.

- The Second Ward was where you defined a place called Brooklyn.

We didn't call it Second Ward then.

It was called Brooklyn, much like Brooklyn, New York.

In fact, when I first came here, they talked about Brooklyn, and I kept saying, "But that's in New York."

They said, "No, it was here," and that's what's so interesting about the history.

- Kelly Alexander's family owned the dry cleaners in the neighborhood.

What kind of memories do you have of this place?

- I have very vivid and very fond memories, you know, of it.

It was a neighborhood that you had something of everything going on.

I remember the-- the stores, the barbershops, the movies, the libraries.

- It was a place where you had lawyers, doctors, dentists, schoolteachers, laborers, a whole plethora of different individuals who lived here.

It was the heartbeat of the African-American community at that time.

- Imagine this is Brooklyn.

This is an African-American neighborhood, it's 50 years ago, and the streets are bustling with people.

There's a black Main Street.

The first black public library in the South is here.

And poof--all gone.

Urban renewal.

It's a tragedy not just here but in every American city, and the Gantt Center is part of the effort to recover some of that energy, to recover some of that history, to transmit some of that heritage to the next generation.

- The Freelon Group looked for inspiration through historical research.

They found this photo of the local Meyer's School.

It was known as the Jacob's Ladder School for its distinctive stairway on the outside of the building.

And they found inspiration in African quilts that had a similar pattern.

- And so the facade of the building is a quilting pattern.

We're taking a high-tech, you know, rain screen system that's very sustainable and using that pattern as a motif around the building.

This is a commissioned piece of art-- and sculpture you might say-- that commemorates the old street grid in the Brooklyn neighborhood.

The engravings actually show that.

Of course now the city has expanded, Brooklyn's no longer there, but our building is actually sitting right here as part of where Brooklyn used to be.

So we love the fact that the Center decided to commemorate the old neighborhood in this way.

- They could've put the Gantt Center in the old Second Ward, which would've been way over there off of this map, but they had the chance to put the building downtown.

Now, it wasn't an ideal site because of its narrow dimensions.

It's right here.

But this is the cultural district.

We got a museum in this location, a theater, another museum, a convention center, and even a really nice park.

Now, the other big advantage is that from the highway, which is down here, the only building you can really see is the Gantt Center, and in effect, it becomes a billboard, a symbolic gateway for the cultural district.

This would seem to be an ideal site, but not so fast.

This was a really complicated site because of its quirky dimensions, 60 feet wide and 400 feet long.

When you first saw the site for this building, this really long narrow site with this ramp going through it, what did you say?

- I thought, "Holy moley.

This is not gonna work."

But, you know, we were so excited to be a part of the project that we just thought, "Well, I don't know.

It's gonna be hard."

- This is the parking ramp that leads underneath the Gantt Center, and what's really interesting about it is that this doesn't lead to the parking for the Gantt Center.

It leads to the parking for a building across the way.

So this was a given situation where you have a ramp that leads to another building, and the Gantt Center had to be built on top of that.

And that was the site that you were given.

- We were given the site.

They said, "What can you do with it?"

So we think it worked out pretty well.

- And this is the width of the building pretty much.

- Pretty much, yes.

Yeah, this is-- this is directly under the building.

And I have to say, you know, the clients weren't thrilled about what they called a leftover site.

I said, "Look, this is an access ramp for another project."

Well, we said, "We like the location," and we asked them to give us, you know, a couple weeks to show them-- to develop something that we thought could be very powerful.

- And then--so when the architect then said, "Trust me"?

- "I can make lemons out of this-- lemonade out of these lemons."

Yes.

- And did he?

- And he did.

- So we're able to turn something that would seem to be impossible into actually something that works for the function that's intended.

And so that's Jacob's Ladder bringing you up, and you arrive on this level.

- We felt that it was important for the Gantt Center to be on Main Street, that for the next 40 years, the role that the Gantt Center would play about presenting African-American art, history, and culture, that it would be extremely important that we'd be very accessible to all people.

- How does the building work?

How is it organized?

- Well, the idea was to come up and take the notion of Jacob's Ladder and arrive at the center of the building, and what that allows us to do is get to the galleries without corridors, and so the main gallery spaces come right off of and entered into from this public space.

- There's a gallery over there.

- Gallery there and here.

And so when you get into those spaces, you can take the full depth of the building.

- They call it a dumbbell scheme, not because it's dumb but because in the middle, you've got this space.

- That's a good way to put it.

- On either end, you have a gallery.

You have another gallery.

- And these stairs are a continuation of this theme of ascending and coming up.

We want people to engage in that, not just think about it and see it, but actually move through the space.

And you'll notice that the floor material is extended to the treads of the stair, and the colors-- if you look closely, we have the very same colors that are modeled into the floor material that we see on the walls.

- In a rectangular-shaped building, it might seem logical to have everything conform to right angles, but the Freelon Group introduced diagonal walls and ceilings, which make the spaces feel more dynamic.

And the path is moving in a diagonal way towards the gallery.

And what you can really see is, when you look down below, how the stair is pinching the space in on one end, and it really begins to open out on the other side.

So that's the idea of a diagonal path moving through a rectangular room.

- That's right, and as you approach the top of the stair, we would like for the visitors to get this "Aha" moment as the space really expands in front of them in that flare that you're talking about.

- While the narrow site and underground ramp were a challenge, another challenge for the Gantt Center was the tight budget.

Funded by public donations, the Freelon Group had to make the dollars go further, so while the materials aren't expensive, it's the assembly that makes it appear rich.

- Well, we actually have a modest budget, and for the skin of the building, for instance, we're using regular, off-the-shelf components like a curtain wall, which is really nothing but glass and mullions, and then aluminum channels that articulate the angles in the facade that we're talking about and then column wraps that are also standard cylindrical covers to the steel columns.

- What about the upper levels?

- Above that, it's a perforated metal panel, and we can see through the perforations to the wall behind.

The brown color that you see is actually painted perforated metal, corrugated metal.

- Got holes in it.

- Yes, it has holes in it.

- Those tiny holes give the facade a sense of depth, but they also allow air to pass through and into a cavity between the screen and the main wall.

This air space efficiently controls heat gain by ventilating hot air out before it enters the inside.

On the other side of the museum is a 400-foot-long wall that faces a parking lot, and that had some neighbors worried about how that would look.

- I lived in the condo building that looks over at this site, and I knew that-- I knew that 50-foot-wide site, big program, they were gonna have to fill every inch of that envelope, and by that, they were gonna build to the property line, and I knew, as an architect, that when you build to a property line-- I was getting ready to look at a big blank wall.

- This is the north facade of the Gantt Center, or the back, and the reason why there's no windows on this side of the building is because, in the future, this parking lot could be a very big building, but in the meantime, you want to have something nice to look at.

So the idea is to bring the pattern of the front and the side and bring it onto the back, inspired by the African quilting pattern, and let that have a visual interest on this side in the meantime.

- And when the building finally emerged and that wall was a reflection of the quilt design I guess that's all over the building, it was an interpretive piece of that, and then it was lit up at night.

It really enhanced our view.

Whereas it once was a parking lot, now we had this wonderful wall to look at that was a great version of a blank wall.

- With all of the problems solved, the Gantt Center has become an important part of the cultural center of Charlotte.

You might have someone, let's say, visiting the Museum of Modern Art, and then they might later in the afternoon come by and stop by this building.

- That's correct, or even conventioneers who are here for a realty convention or some other profession and they want to take a break from the seminars.

They can come over and learn about Charlotte's history.

- This is a compilation of four years of us traveling around and gathering questions and answers from within the greater black male community.

- This may seem like a silly question, but I want to know, am I the only who has problems eating chicken, watermelon, and bananas in front of white people?

- With three distinct galleries, the Gantt Center provides a full spectrum of arts and culture.

Why did you make this thing circular over here?

- Well, the intention of Question Bridge is to try to create the experience of being a privileged witness to a private conversation happening among black men, and so we designed the installation into an arc that implies a circle that embraces the audience.

And that's what's wonderful about being in a space that allows for many different interpretations of the same idea.

This is a really ideal space, and that's why we're really honored to be here.

- You come into the space, and there's these huge windows, and a day like today, sun is just sort of basking through, and then as you go into the galleries, the spaces become much more intimate.

I also like the challenge of working with-- inside this kind of eccentric shape.

It's kind of a challenge to kind of balance out, you know, the space and make a believable space within it, inside of it.

- You sound like an architect.

- Charlotte's a New South city.

It's a city that's making it up as it goes along, and that can be real exciting, but it also means that it's work to safeguard history here, and the Gantt Center is doing a really good job of helping people understand the African-American heritage that is part of all of our heritage here in Charlotte.

- What do you think that some of the old-timers-- what do you think they think when they're up here and look back over the city and how it's changed?

- There's probably a mixed feeling of, you know, "What happened to our neighborhood?"

But on the other hand, we commemorate that.

We feel good about having something that speaks to what was here before.

- What's beautiful is to see men and women in their 80s who lived in Brooklyn way back then who come up here-- not just up here, they walk around the building itself and say, "My goodness."

- It's great to be able to bring back that reality.

It really is.

- Is the client happy that you convinced them to stay in this location as opposed to building someplace else?

- They are thrilled, and part of being an architect is trying to be convincing, right, because we look ahead and we might be able to see and envision something that our clients cannot, so, you know, we have to be able to express that and somehow convince them that over time, you know, this vision can be realized and it will be beautiful for them.

- And the school buses do pull up here, and we do see kids getting out, and we see them becoming educated, black and white kids, and recognizing what a multicultural society we are.

And more importantly, I think a kid in the sixth grade today has a sense of feeling, "I belong," you know, "I belong here "because I can see contributions that have been made in history and through the fine arts," and that is so damn important in my mind.

- To create a great art space, it seems you need three things: you need great art, you need a great building design, and you need great lighting.

So you're a lighting designer.

How do you do that?

- Okay, typically we work in three layers of light.

The first layer being general illumination in a space.

Typically that might come from windows that you have in a space or general down lighting, basically just defining our spatial cues in the space.

The second layer would be lighting surface in a space to help us create the perception of brightness.

- With something like this.

- Yeah.

So this would be a typical up light type of fixture.

Usually we don't see this type of hardware, but we like to up light the ceilings and create that general sense of brightness and sort of bring up the mood in a space.

- Kind of a glow.

- Yup, create a glow.

Bring up the mood in a space.

The other layer would be focused lighting on the art.

This is a traditional halogen fixture that we, you know, would see normally in museum projects, and this is a LED spotlight fixture.

- So I see a painting here.

If we put a spot on it, that looks pretty good, right?

- The challenge here is that it creates a dramatic presentation and the contrast between the background and the artwork can be visually tiring.

- So that's why you like the layers.

- That's why we do the layers, yeah.

- Okay, can we see what that looks like?

- Sure, so starting with our general illumination, we basically just have kind of light in the space.

When we add our second layer of ambient up light, we start to create a perception of brightness and sort of lift the mood of the space.

The challenge here is that they're basically at the same-- a similar illumination level.

So our intent is to add positive focus to the artwork to really bring some animation to the space and some depth to the painting.

- Now I see the color, the detail.

That's what you're looking for.

- Yeah.

- When the Barnes Foundation and the Gantt Center were commissioned, they were conceived as stand-alone buildings.

They began with a blank slate.

Nothing was on that site.

On the other hand, the Nelson-Atkins Museum opened in Kansas City in 1933 in an imposing Beaux-Art style building.

Decades later, the Museum wanted to expand the collection with a complementary addition, and did they get a building that matched the look of the existing museum?

Not exactly.

The best way to understand the Nelson-Atkins Museum and the new Henry Bloch Building is from a distance.

In this way, one can see the two very different visions, the original building and the new wing.

Greg Sheldon and Casey Cassias are with BNIM, a Kansas City based architecture firm that managed the construction process.

What was the building assignment?

- Well, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art had a new vision for the future.

They realized that they needed more space to be able to display all of their collections, and they wanted to put themselves on the map internationally with kind of a landmark building.

- Many high-profile buildings start with a design competition with invited architects submitting proposed designs.

Steven Holl and his firm know this process well.

- Well, it's a typical process, architect competitions.

You know, 150 architects apply.

They boil it down to 6, and then they give them two months and $50,000, and they ask you how to do it.

And the rules said that you had to add on to the north and you couldn't go anywhere else on the site.

And then we decided to break the rules and go down into the landscape.

This is all connected in the landscape and come up with these lenses that come up through and bring the light down and shape your view but all leave all four elevations of this exposed.

- And he wanted to put it on that street going down to the side of it and make it very modern.

He didn't want it to fight with the original building, 'cause it's beautiful architecture and anything you add in front of it would kind of ruin the architecture, so he thought it should be completely different.

- It's almost counterintuitive because you have this building-- You think that the best way to be deferential to it is to maybe copy or mimic it, but in fact, they do everything the opposite.

- Exactly the opposite.

When the building was first announced to the public, there was a lot of commentary about that, and there were a lot of people that felt that the correct solution would have been to imitate the old building, but when you really start to look at it, I think the way to be most respectful of the old building is to let it stand for what it is and to make a completely new gesture on the site.

- The Bloch Building addition is comprised of five connected buildings, each with its own galleries, or what Steven Holl calls lenses.

The addition is buried into the landscape.

It isn't below grade, and it isn't above grade, and by doing this, it doesn't overpower the existing museum.

- I can find every drawing for every project that I've ever done because they're all on 5x7 watercolor pads.

That starts in 1977.

- Unlike most architects, Steven Holl doesn't start a design by sketching with pencils and pens.

He uses watercolors.

- You ask me about a project, and I can go to the year and go to the box and then find-- you know, find the drawing.

For example, here's the Nelson-Atkins Museum.

Now, we've already decided to go down into the landscape, but I'm thinking, "What are the ideals?"

The ideals of connecting to the landscape, light, open, inviting, freedom of movement.

So you can see that the process isn't about painting.

It's about conceptualizing.

The concept--you can write words on here and-- Oh, you see a lot of bad designs too, you know?

Really terrible stuff.

I would never-- you know, you get up in the morning.

You have a bad day.

You don't show anybody, right?

- And how long does it take typically?

- Anywhere from a day to six months.

- [chuckles] - But after I have the idea, I can tell you exactly how long it's gonna take.

- Steven Holl's work is inspired by some aspect of a building site.

He calls it anchoring.

This approach ensures that each building is unique to that site, and it's why each new building looks different than the last.

Architect Chris McVoy is a senior partner with Steven Holl Architects.

How does site inform your work?

- Site is critical to the concept for every project, and that's one of the reasons all of our buildings look different, is they're specific for that place, that site, that place on the earth.

And here, it's a very active urban site.

You can see the subways, all the activity, and you have the playing fields.

So the building is kind of pivoting between this urban context and the playing fields opening up.

So we made this space suspended up in the air overlooking the whole city and all the fields, and it really gives you a sense of a new perspective on the city.

Architecture can do that.

It can reframe your understanding of your context in your city by making a new kind of space with new perspectives.

- On your sketch, I saw you say something about the stone and the feather.

What does that mean?

- That means that this building-- these are kind of what I say complementary contrasts.

This is stone.

This is, I call, the feather.

This is glass, you know.

One of them is heavy.

One of them is light.

One of them is 1933.

One of them is 2002.

- So this is one of the really special moments where you get to look out and see the old, original, classic building next to the new design concept, where you really see that kind of chameleon glass next to the stone.

The landscape is here, and this is the plane that the lenses would come up and actually be fused with the landscape and be one.

And so the idea was that the space in between the buildings became outside galleries.

- And so here we are in an outside room.

So we really doubled the amount of gallery space by creating the sculpture park on the outside of the building.

- So people come out on top.

They can look at artwork.

But underneath that, there's a building.

- Yeah, there's a whole nother gallery directly below us.

The building is actually effectively three football fields long, all below grade, and so you think about that, but then you see these small-scale lenses, and it really breaks it down in a scale that's very human-friendly, and it's not this big, hulking mass that it would've been otherwise.

- And what does it feel like at night?

- Oh, at night, it's just-- I always use the word "ethereal," 'cause it just--this soft glow that just envelops you.

And it's just really wonderful, and it just gravitates and just pulls you in.

- For this new wing to be successful, the existing landscape design had to be seamlessly integrated with the new.

So what is the role of the landscape designer?

Now, the architect for this building had this idea of this rolling landscape in between these lenses.

So you've got these five lenses in this rolling landscape, but the site is flat, so how do you achieve it?

- Well, Stephen, instead of building the building into the landscape, the landscape was actually constructed around the building, and to give you a sense of how that is, this model is a model of the adjacent landscape, and you can see the relative shallowness of the terraces.

And then this other model is a sliced-through landscape of the new building, and you can see that it's much higher and much more energetic.

The landscape is actually built up to cover the building.

- So what we're really seeing are lenses that are popping up, but in all of this green here, there's building there.

- Yeah, exactly.

What's different about this building is that instead of there being a building and a landscape, on this project, they're one in the same.

- To make the building feel like it's growing out of the earth, the architects came up with a visual detail between the lens and the ground.

The way that the building meets the ground is always a challenge.

How did you deal with it here?

- So it was really critical in this building, and we always thought about this as, if you will, the grass to the glass detail, and we wanted to make it as minimal as possible.

So we came up with this detail where we put a stainless steel gutter in, and we actually collect the water, and we get that eight-inch lift from down below.

It really creates this really crisp, clean detail that really sets the building off and allows the lenses to just spring from the ground.

- So you've got rain.

The rain just goes down in the gutter.

It doesn't destroy or damage the glass.

- Right, exactly.

- So how does the Bloch Building use these lenses to bring in natural light?

- The lenses are a translucent glass, structural glass, so there's no framework.

It's just abstract light, a kind of block of light like a block of ice.

It comes down through this, what we call a T wall, through the curved undersides, which refract the light down into the galleries, and you see how there are these what we call flutters, openings between them that mix north and south light, so you always have the cool north light and the warm direct south light of the sun.

- So this shape is bringing the light down like a scoop.

- Exactly, cupping it and bringing it down into the galleries.

So to get the right quality of light in the space, we test many different glass types, and you can see here, these are two different types.

This is OKALUX, which is clear straws perpendicular to the glass, and that pulls the light through and in.

- One of the things I like so much about the museum is the quality of movement.

It's so effortless, and it's only because of this ramp.

We're just slowly descending down with this ramp down into the gallery spaces.

Now, in a lot of museums, you need a map to figure out where you're going.

Here, we just follow the path down.

This gallery sequence is so interesting.

We don't really walk in a straight line, do we?

- No, the building bends and folds in plan as you move down through the landscape.

- And there's certain moments where you can then look outside.

- That's correct.

You get the translucent glass here, which is typical for the building.

- Those are very strategic.

- Very strategic.

- When you let someone look out, you want them to see something.

- Those weren't accidently chosen.

They're very deliberate in each case.

- I like the way you've brought the light this way, but then why do you tilt the wall that way?

- The wall's tilted in both directions you can see here and here so we can mix the light that's coming in from the north and the south sides to get the best balance of color for the art.

- The balance matters.

- The balance matters.

It matters.

Artists often like to paint with north light, so if you get nothing but south light, maybe that's not a good thing.

It won't simulate the original conditions under which it was painted.

By blending it, you start to get the full range of color.

- It has a quality of a kind of a magic lantern.

I mean, why does it have that quality?

- It does.

This is a low-iron acid-etched glass, and it's really a perfect example.

The building many people say is as though it was actually built out of light.

One of the ideas was that the light on the wall would blend into these dark surfaces on the floor and above on the ceiling so the room is luminous throughout.

- One place where the lens and the outdoor meet is in the gallery designed for the sculpture of Isamu Noguchi.

- This is one of the most sublime spaces in the building.

The original design conceived of taking the zipper spine that you see out there coming right on in, taking these two fountains that are behind us, the sculpture here, and having them go right out into the landscape, so it's more of this notion of the landscape being fused with the building and the glass being very transparent and coming through and then this space being scaled for these seven specific pieces.

- And knowing Noguchi's work, he likes to connect often to the outside.

This is the one moment where it seems that the building is really embracing the outside.

- That's absolutely correct.

- When you think about architecture, you can think about it in different scales.

There's the big scale, intermediate scale, and small scale.

You can also think about it in terms of design intensity.

So for example, the big scale-- that's the big idea.

That's the glass lenses in the landscape.

That's pretty design-intensive.

You can also look at details like this handrail.

This is kind of the small detail.

But this requires a lot of design intensity as well.

And then you can take the intermediate scale.

That is the rooms or the gallery spaces.

In here, they purposely pull back.

They say, "We want to be very quiet.

The architecture should really be subservient to the artwork."

Now, there's one other detail that's not in the actual museum, but it really brings together both the old and new wings.

It's a new parking garage and reflecting pool.

- I was thinking of a vast hall, very tall, where the concrete structure's very special, and there's water.

There's skylights in that pond, that big pond that's in front, and those skylights bring the light down to the parking below.

Later, that became One Sun in 34 Moons, the Walter De Maria piece.

- This used to be parking.

- Yes, it did.

- And now you've turned it into a proper drop-off, and there's a beautiful fountain.

- There's these elements that you can see, the rings, these oculi that are essential skylights to let shafts of light down into the parking garage, and they're combined with the sculptural piece that represents a shard of the sun.

So by day, the shard of the sun glows in the sunlight, and by night, these rings are illuminated, and they glow like 34 moons in the bottom of the pool.

- Now, light is coming through those holes in the ceiling through a shallow layer of water, and the sunlight is coming through and creating this magical effect on the ground.

- Absolutely, it's the surface of the water that's rippling in the wind that creates this dancing light on the floor of the parking garage.

And it was interesting that when the parking garage first opened, before the cars came in, students from the Kansas City Art Institute across the street would cover with blankets and picnic baskets, spread them out in the dancing light and have a picnic lunch.

- It was very intentional.

- Dana Knapp was the director of planning with the museum.

She worked between the client, architects, and consultants.

She understood that this was a big undertaking.

How many consultants did you have on this job?

- Wow, I can't say that I ever counted them, but I think on this project maybe at its height was-- it was around 50, from art storage consultants to envelope and glass consultants, security consultants.

So we really wanted to get it right, and that expertise was invaluable.

- Now that it's done, the new challenge is bringing in visitors.

When you move the sequence of lenses where you're moving down and the galleries are tilted this way and that way, you feel kind of as if you're being sort of engaged and pulled into the architecture.

- Totally, and I think that-- that is the flow that drives you in and, at the same time, allows you also to discover the gallery as an independent section of the museum, and it is also the way of reaching out to different communities that little by little start enjoying the museum, understand that it's free, understand that also they can come on their own terms, spend quality time, and that there's something that they can enjoy every time that they come.

- Steven Holl referred to a quote that's written on the back of the original museum: "The soul has more need for the ideal than the real," and he used that as inspiration not to follow along with the original concept but to design the new wing in a different way.

- The experience of a building is something that's inside the spaces of it, and that's how we live in a building.

That's how architecture changes the way we live, not to look at it.

So I always felt that a building has got to be a lot more when you go in it than when you look at it.

- Well, for us, it works because Steven has such a care for art and a real passion, so I think in this commission-- and my predecessor Mark Wilson, who was working with him in designing the program for the building, got the best of both of them.

- When you walk down the hall and look up, it's pretty incredible, and yet it doesn't detract from the other building, which is really what they wanted.

- Satisfying I think was-- is a good word, and now to see years later not only the recognition of the project but also, you know, people moving through it and responding to it in a way that you-- you had hoped.

- It's working.

- It's working... [both chuckle] Which is always a good thing.